Australian radio DJ Michael Christian speaks during an interview with the TV station on Dec. 10. / AP

by Traci Watson, Special for USA TODAY

by Traci Watson, Special for USA TODAY

LONDON - The British tabloids on Monday morning carried headlines such as "Hoaxed Nurse 'Died of Shame.'" But unlike their newspapers, many ordinary Britons refused to condemn the radio DJs whose prank call led to Friday's apparent suicide of a nurse at the hospital caring for the pregnant Duchess of Cambridge.

"They're responsible for the phone call. They're not responsible for the nurse committing suicide," said Londoner Henry O'Brian, a restaurant manager. "It's a joke that became a tragedy."

"It's just unfortunate," said teacher Samantha Windsor of Northamptonshire. "You can't point a finger at the DJs. They couldn't imagine that would happen. There was no intention."

However forgiving some members of the British public, the DJs' bosses appear to be taking no chances. Southern Cross Austereo, the Australian media company that owns the Sydney radio station that aired the hoax call, announced Monday that the two DJs will stay off the air "until further notice." The company also canceled the DJs' Hot30 show and banned prank calls companywide.

DJs Mel Greig and Michael Christian, after a weekend in seclusion, gave tearful apologies on Australian TV Monday for their Tuesday phone call to the King Edward VII Hospital. The duchess, still widely known here as Kate Middleton, was being treated at the private hospital in one of London's poshest neighborhoods for dehydration brought on by acute morning sickness.

Putting on fake British accents, Greig pretended to be the queen and Christian pretended to be Prince Charles, father of Kate's husband Prince William, now known as the Duke of Cambridge. The DJs' phone call was apparently answered by nurse Jacintha Saldanha, 46, who transferred the pranksters to another nurse. The second nurse, seemingly in the belief that she was talking to the royal family, gave details on the duchess's condition to the DJs, who not only replayed the call but also boasted about it on Twitter.

Saldanha's body was discovered Friday morning in the nurses' quarters around the corner from the hospital. A postmortem begins today and could yield results as early as Tuesday, Scotland Yard said. Police have characterized the death as "unexplained."

" I have thought about this a million times in my head, that I just wanted to reach out to (Saldanha's family) and just give them a big hug and say sorry," Greig told Australia's Nine News on Monday. "The thought we may have played a part in (Saldhana's death) is gut-wrenching."

Christian said that he was "shattered, heartbroken."

"The joke 100% was on us," he said. "The idea was never, 'Let's call up and get through to Kate,' or 'Let's speak to a nurse.' The joke was our accents are horrible, they don't sound anything like who they're intended to be."

After Saldanha's death was announced, 2Day FM, Greig and Christian's station, was inundated with angry phone calls and emails, and major companies yanked their ads from the station's lineup.

On Twitter, in newspapers columns, and in online forums, Britons poured vitriol on the pair, accusing them of having blood on their hands and calling for them to be fired, even prosecuted. The Daily Mail called them "sick jokers," while another tabloid, The Daily Star, ran the headline, "Make Them Pay for Nurse Death" with an editorial calling for the two to be "sacked."

London student Hayley Allardyce agreed with the Star that the DJs should lose their jobs.

"It's horrible what they did. It's a serious matter," she said. "I'm surprised they haven't quit."

But others did not share her outrage, and many felt that the hospital must have let Saldanha down in some way.

"I quite like prank calls, so I have no problem" with the joke, said London engineer Matt Stockdale. Saldanha "obviously felt quite guilty or bad about it, but it didn't seem cruel."

"I don't think it was their fault," said Londoner Stephen Doyle. "There should've been more support from the hospital to the person concerned. â?¦ When you've got a high-profile patient like that, you should have procedures in place."

But even those who didn't hold the DJs accountable had limited sympathy for them, acknowledging that their prank, if not cruel, was at the least thoughtless and immature, and was likely to bring back terrible memories for the royal family of another media intrusion with deadly consequences - the 1997 death of Princess Diana in a car crash while being pursued by paparazzi.

The new tragedy "will highlight" to the royals once again the unrelenting pressures of their fame, said London artist Annabel Wightman. "It's devastating at their happy time."